(Full disclosure: I am friends with the author.)"Mastering MariaDB" is a great introduction to MariaDB for intermediate level MySQL DBAs, as well as a good overall technical manual for MySQL. For example, I thought it described InnoDB locking better than the online MySQL manual. But it definitely assumes a basic knowledge in SQL, so beginner DBAs should come back to this book later, or use it for reference alongside simpler textbooks.Razzoli has a fluid writing style, which is a nice change from the usual terse language we expect in technical books. It makes the book a more comfortable read, given the dry subject matter. You can see more of Razzoli's writing about MariaDB and MySQL in his blog: https://falseisnotnull.wordpress.com/The book topics include: features specific to MariaDB; debugging; buffers and caches; backups and sharding. The book also focuses on stored procedures and partitioning, which are often overlooked subjects in other MySQL manuals. I was happy to see whole chapter on query tuning, because that's a lost art in database administration and a common bottleneck to optimal server performance. And the last section covers the step-by-step setup and troubleshooting of MariaDB Galera Clusters, so it's well worth a read if you want to test Galera for your own systems.I would have liked the book to be a bit more interactive; it doesn't say which MariaDB version it's referring to so that you could download it and play along (other than to point out when certain features were added), and there aren't very many examples compared to similar books. However, the theory is a good basis for further investigation and I will be coming back to this book in the future.